Philip Hodgetts’ unique blend of business and production knowledge gives him insight into the current state of the industry, and a remarkably accurate look forward. Here he shares his thinking, and points to articles of interest from other sites, with context as to why they're interesting.

It was an interesting topic, although our panel got quite pessimistic about the future of society if we’re not very careful with how AI/Machine Learning comes into our lives, but that’s a blog post for another time.

What has really set me thinking was a comment by John Motz, CTO Gray Meta that his 12 year old and her friends, spend more time creating media for each other than simply consuming it.

I’m at a serious disadvantage as I don’t have ready access to any 12 year olds, so I’m happy to take John’s comments at face value, particularly since that is the theme of Apple’s “What’s a Computer” ad targeted at that age range. It set me thinking.

Then I remembered that I’d written of various YouTube stars in the context of that being a common ambition for young people. An ambition that has no barriers.

If the trend is toward creation as well as consumption, then anything that empowers creativity/story telling is not only a good thing, but probably going to be a good business. Two subsequent thoughts occurred.

It helps me keep focused with the future of Lumberjack as we move more toward integrating cognitive services, machine learning, and our own story building tools (originally created for First Cuts a decade ago). We are about empowering story tellers who can easily be overwhelmed when trying to find the story path through what they’ve shot. Myself included!

Secondly, it is no surprise that “newly politically active” high schoolers protesting the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School should be so media savvy. They’ve been preparing presentations for their classmates and friends for years. They probably have more media experience than most politicians.

When it comes to social media, they are experts compared to most politicians, as we’ve already seen.

Those of us in traditional media production may have some further adapting to do.